The Oman government has formulated a far-reaching strategic vision for the country in the following terms: "To transform the Sultanate of Oman into a sustainable knowledge society by leveraging information and communication technologies to enhance government services, enrich businesses, and empower individuals."

One of the elements of this vision is an overarching goal of building an education system that equips Omanis with 21st century skills through the increased use of eLearning in schools. With the implementation of an educational portal that provides appropriate and professional interactive content, the Oman MoE will provide students with access to their class work or homework, tools to solve problems, and individualized immediate feedback. Learning will become a constructive activity since the students will now depend on themselves to acquire the necessary information.

"UKS is very proud of this strategic partnership with Oman's Ministry of Education and for being selected to deliver such a specialized training program", said Tawfeeq Jaafar, UKS Content Services Manager. "Our training approach is based on utilizing the current skills of the ministry's team and putting it into an eLearning context in order to enable them to develop eLearning courses".

The training program covered many important eLearning subjects, such as:

• Instructional design
• Using Web 2.0 tools in learning
• Developing storyboards
• Developing online, reusable learning objects using learn eXact
• Managing the content development cycle using learn eXact
• Managing content using learn eXact

Tawfeeq Jaafar continues: "In order to get the most benefit out of this training, we were keen on providing ample practical exercises that gave the trainees a better hands-on experience in eLearning content development. The trainees were split into smaller groups and each was asked to produce an online learning object. At the end of the training program, the trainees were able to develop and deliver new online learning objects."